The Cosmological Grace Anchor Study Booklet
Mike Hillebrecht
Theological Nonfiction • Study Booklet
When did grace begin? The booklet opens with a reader who has read a familiar passage for years and is interrupted by one word: before. Second Timothy 1:9 places God’s purpose and grace in Christ Jesus before the ages began. The Introduction asks what happens to the story a person has carried when its beginning moves there.
Eight lessons follow the question. “Before the Beginning” sets 2 Timothy 1:9 beside Genesis 1 and the throne of grace. “The One Who Speaks” takes up chesed through Exodus 34, Psalm 136, and Hosea. “The Gift Without a Ledger” turns to charis in Paul. “The Cross and the Resurrection” reads the three crosses, marks the Barabbas inference as an inference, and returns to Exodus 34 to ask what Jesus reveals about the Father’s justice and mercy. “Belonging Before Awareness” reads Luke 15 with the father as the one who is prodigal with welcome, drawing on Kenneth E. Bailey’s reading of the cultural setting, and takes up adoption. “The Veil of Separation” and “Living From Grace” lead to “Grace Made Visible Among Us,” which treats the division between believer and unbeliever as a wall (Ephesians 2).
The booklet is built to be written in. Each lesson begins with a space for the reader’s present understanding, recorded before the teaching is read. Pauses send the reader back to the passage in its context to write what they see. Each lesson carries reflection questions and a practice, and group guidance is included, though no meeting schedule is required. The closing section, “What Do You Understand Now,” asks eight questions and returns the reader to the first answer.
It presents the Cosmological Grace Anchor openly as a reading across texts, and it tells the reader what to expect: “This booklet will not ask you to switch off your mind in order to feel better.” Its position is that humanity is one family held in the Father’s prior purpose, and that belief does not draw the boundary. Its last line is a question for the reader to carry out: “Who is waiting to be heard?”
The CGA Study Booklet is written for an individual reader or a small group, inside the church or outside it, who wants to work through the texts behind prior grace at their own pace.